This is the essence of political correctness and nasty, aggressive, bullying groupthink, (pick any current agenda) and the progressive left, have been aggressively pushing it for many decades. One of the main advocates and protagonists and regarded as the Godfather of leftist thought for the last 60 years or so and the author of more than 100 books, is Noam Chomsky who wrote in The Common Good, 1998:

“..The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the systems are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of debate..”

Sound or feel familiar?

Chomsky also wrote in the same book: “the best defence against democracy is to distract people.”